Minorities in Romania

[1] The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians (Szeklers, Csangos, and Magyars; especially in Harghita, Covasna, and Mureș counties) and Romani people, with a declining German population (in Timiș, Sibiu, Brașov, or Suceava) and smaller numbers of Poles in Bukovina (Austria-Hungary attracted Polish miners, who settled there from the Kraków region in contemporary Poland during the 19th century), Serbs, Croats, Slovaks and Banat Bulgarians (in Banat), Ukrainians (in Maramureș and Bukovina), Greeks (Brăila, Constanța), Jews (Wallachia, Bucharest), Turks and Tatars (in Constanța), Armenians, Russians (Lipovans, in Tulcea), Afro-Romanians, and others.

To this day, minority populations are greatest in Transylvania and the Banat, historical regions situated in the north and west of the country which were former territorial possessions of either the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburgs, or the Austrian Empire (since 1867 the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary until World War I).

During the war that percentage was halved, largely by the loss of the border areas of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina (to the former Soviet Union, now Republic of Moldova and Ukraine), Black Sea islands (to the former Soviet Union, now Ukraine), and southern Dobrudja (to Bulgaria), as well as by the postwar flight or deportation of ethnic Germans.

In the Romanian election law, government-recognized ethnic minorities in Romania are subject to a significantly lower threshold and have consequently won seats in the Chamber of Deputies since the fall of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime.

[3] Most ethnic Hungarians live in what is today known as Transylvania (where they make up about 16.79% of the population), an area that includes the historic regions of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș.